Review

Pick of the paperbacks, Mar 6

The first 150 pages of this Man Booker-shortlisted novel are compelling. We
are introduced to four friends, all in their twenties, all living in New
York. Willem is a would-be actor; Malcolm is an architect; JB is an
up-and-coming artist; and the mysterious Jude is a clever, hard-working
lawyer. They go to parties and gallery openings and restaurants. They turn
30. Success begins: JB has his first solo show, Willem lands a part in a
film. Then Jude’s backstory kicks in and you find yourself reading a totally
different book.

The hook is child abuse. A Little Life is reminiscent of that 1990s trend for
child-abuse memoirs: competitive revelations, designed to titillate.
Yanagihara takes full advantage of this crude yet effective formula, the
drip-feed of devastating disclosure. And the prose? Yanagihara reportedly
wrote the novel in a “fevered” 18 months,